Do we have any other statement in MySQL instead of SHOW COLUMNS to get the list of columns in an existing table?

Yes, we can use DESCRIBE or EXPLAIN statements instead of SHOW COLUMNS statement to get the list of the columns in an existing table. In the example below we have applied DESCRIBE and EXPLAIN statement on ‘Employee’ table and got the same result set as got after SHOW COLUMNS statement −

mysql> DESCRIBE Employee\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
  Field: Id
   Type: int(11)
   Null: YES
    Key:
Default: NULL
  Extra:
*************************** 2. row ***************************
  Field: Name
   Type: varchar(20)
   Null: YES
    Key:
Default: NULL
  Extra:
2 rows in set (0.05 sec)

mysql> Explain Employee\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
  Field: Id
   Type: int(11)
   Null: YES
    Key:
Default: NULL
  Extra:
*************************** 2. row ***************************
  Field: Name
   Type: varchar(20)
   Null: YES
    Key:
Default: NULL
  Extra:
2 rows in set (0.04 sec)

Lakshmi Srinivas

Programmer / Analyst / Technician

Updated on: 29-Jan-2020

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